Rfv-sense: (Internet) Represents two eyes vertically aligned, in order to form emoticons.

We do not usually have such "part of" definitions. It'd need cites that show : used on its own to represent two eyes, without being part of a smiley. -- Liliana• 20:17, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

We have letters, Hangul components such as ㄱ and Chinese character components such as 扌. Why not emoticon components? --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 00:53, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Keep per BenjaminBarrett12. It's obviously used in forming a range of different emoticons: :-) :-P :-( :-/ :-D etc. (as well as versions without hyphens, and versions written right-to-left). Other marks are sometimes used for eyes as well, as in ;-) and 8-) , and of course other sets of emoticons have completely different conventions, as in ^_^ and -_- and so on, but in the type of emoticon that predominates in the anglophone world, a colon is the "unmarked" representation. Emoticons are not part of language — they're more like paralanguage — but we allow entries for them, so it makes sense to include some of the analogues-of-morphemes that compose them. —RuakhTALK 01:48, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Observation: slashes, brackets, colons, and many other characters are used in ASCII art as straight lines, curved lines, speckles, and so on. Equinox◑ 01:51, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I think the key difference is Iconicity. Colon-for-eyes is obviously not fully conventionalized/arbitrary/iconic, but it's partly so. Compare the following:

Oops! My glasses must have thought it was Sunday. BP

Oops! My glasses must have thought it was Sunday. :P

Which emoticon do you find more decipherable? B is sometimes used for eyes, and it makes sense for someone wearing glasses, but : is the arbitrary conventional icon.

But, y'know what? This has really turned into an RFD discussion. Actually, for that matter, it really started as an RFD discussion: the existing sense, after all, is specifically for the use of colon-for-eyes as part of an emoticon, so it doesn't make sense to RFV it for evidence that it's used not as part of emoticon.

Not sure whether it's dictionary-worthy, but the colon is also used in computing to separate a protocol name or drive letter from the rest of a resource path, e.g. c:/windows/media/, http://example.com, telnet:cpca4. Equinox◑ 10:11, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Rfv-sense: (Internet) Represents two eyes vertically aligned, in order to form emoticons.

We do not usually have such "part of" definitions. It'd need cites that show : used on its own to represent two eyes, without being part of a smiley. -- Liliana• 20:17, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

We have letters, Hangul components such as ㄱ and Chinese character components such as 扌. Why not emoticon components? --BenjaminBarrett12 (talk) 00:53, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Keep per BenjaminBarrett12. It's obviously used in forming a range of different emoticons: :-) :-P :-( :-/ :-D etc. (as well as versions without hyphens, and versions written right-to-left). Other marks are sometimes used for eyes as well, as in ;-) and 8-) , and of course other sets of emoticons have completely different conventions, as in ^_^ and -_- and so on, but in the type of emoticon that predominates in the anglophone world, a colon is the "unmarked" representation. Emoticons are not part of language — they're more like paralanguage — but we allow entries for them, so it makes sense to include some of the analogues-of-morphemes that compose them. —RuakhTALK 01:48, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Observation: slashes, brackets, colons, and many other characters are used in ASCII art as straight lines, curved lines, speckles, and so on. Equinox◑ 01:51, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I think the key difference is Iconicity. Colon-for-eyes is obviously not fully conventionalized/arbitrary/iconic, but it's partly so. Compare the following:

Oops! My glasses must have thought it was Sunday. BP

Oops! My glasses must have thought it was Sunday. :P

Which emoticon do you find more decipherable? B is sometimes used for eyes, and it makes sense for someone wearing glasses, but : is the arbitrary conventional icon.

But, y'know what? This has really turned into an RFD discussion. Actually, for that matter, it really started as an RFD discussion: the existing sense, after all, is specifically for the use of colon-for-eyes as part of an emoticon, so it doesn't make sense to RFV it for evidence that it's used not as part of emoticon.